Westworld, populism and Putin

** wild applause **

I like the combination "Employment law, late medieval law and the Golden Age of Television".

Why thank you **bows theatrically**

These are my three prime interests, so I thought why not blog about them?

I took the header picture from this beautiful manuscript picture of the Court of King's Bench in 1460 (now the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court), I don't know why but I find it completely awesome (prisoners at the bottom, judges at the top; clerks and lawyers in the middle)

It's a funny picture - I wonder how many of them were political malcontents as opposed to n'erdowells.

I visited Canterbury with a friend recently and in the old ruined castle, there is a long list of all the trials of various people that took place there back in medieval times. You can see so clearly how the lawyers, the church and the barons worked together to keep political unrest down and ensure that their exploitative and oppressive rule continued.

One of the best moments was in the Peasant's Revolt, when the local leader of the uprising managed to get the bishop to destroy all the local tax records - doubtless causing decades of confusion and dismay amongst the clergy and aristocrats of the county.

Why thank you **bows theatrically**

These are my three prime interests, so I thought why not blog about them?

I took the header picture from this beautiful manuscript picture of the Court of King's Bench in 1460 (now the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court), I don't know why but I find it completely awesome (prisoners at the bottom, judges at the top; clerks and lawyers in the middle)

We don't know the manuscript dates from exactly 1460; the composition of the court is stable from 1453 to 18th March 1460 and then doesn't have 5 judges again for a very long time. Fortescue is the judge in the centre (CJKB), Yelverton is on his right (our left), Markham is on Fortescue's left (our right), Bingham is on the extreme left as we look at the court and the dying Pole is to Markham's left (extreme right as we look). It is a very strong court.

Fortescue's writings In Praise of the Laws of England are still in print

X

Btw, have you read Dudley's Tree of Commonwealth? Quite interesting if you enjoy late medieval and early modern English political and legal texts.

And I was wondering if you knew that Fortescue's elder brother Henry was the Chief Justice of the King's Bench of Ireland in the late 1420s? If Hal and Jack weren't too far in age it would mean Henry got the role fairly young, and it would be an absolutely fascinating position at that time.

In the late 1420s, Dublin only had around 10,000 people and the royal jurisdiction really only extended to the edge of the Pale, outside were the unreliable Hiberno-Norman lords and the Irish natives. I can imagine Dublin might almost have had a kind of Wild West feel about it (Deadwood-ish?)

I think describing Ireland as a wild westish frontier would be quite accurate until possibly even until the early/mid 1800's. Albeit lacking large scale emigration towards it's later years.

Thanks for the info, very interesting indeed. Have you spent any time on David Seipp's yearbook database? Pretty much every case in the yearbooks is in the database, with a lot of the material translated (between my schoolboy French and legal knowledge I'm able to parse a lot of the Law French).

You seem quite knowledgeable about this, is it an area of particular interest for you? I'm doing my final year research project this term and intending to do late medieval employment law. If you have some expertise on this subject I'd be very interested in talking to you as I have many questions and the more information the better (particularly in terms of sources)



Excellent quote, I found De Laudibus to be utterly fascinating (all the more so for his description of the serjeants accession ceremony and the perquisites of the court upon such an accession). I'm spending quite a bit of time at the moment reading up on late medieval law. I wrote a blogpost about misconduct in the medieval magistracy on my blog, if you're interested

https://orderofthecoif.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/misconduct-in-the-medieval-magistracy/

I wrote a blogpost about misconduct in the medieval magistracy on my blog, if you're interested

https://orderofthecoif.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/misconduct-in-the-medieval-magistracy/

Possibly provincial Ireland, but not Dublin.

There's nothing like Marsh's Library (1701) in Deadwood



The building to the right.

And the Irish Parliament House is 70 years older than the US Capitol (although the iconic views of the portico are later).

Well yeah obviously ignoring the much larger population centres, like dublin etc. But then you have to also consider it a Wild West of it's era, not a direct comparison. You had many fairly large government buildings and good infrastructure in many of the american territories prior to statehood.

Just look at the likes of Denver which were miner towns having State Buildings and Libraries like the above to shame from around 1860-1880 at the end of the 'wild west' period. While the frontier period arguably started in 1607, the 'wild west' period didn't really start until the 1780's without it being recognisable to our stereotypical image until 1850. It's generally agreed to have also ended around 1912. Denver itself was one of the few miner towns to actually survive and rise to cityhood.